Editorial: Global-warming zealots in control

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, center, signs the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, to reduce California's Greenhouse Gas Emissions through out the State, on Treasure Island, California, on Wednesday, September 27, 2006. Schwarzenegger signed the toughest U.S. emissions law, enacting restrictions that have been praised for targeting so-called greenhouse gases and panned for stifling business investment. Bloomberg News

Scientific, economic and political realities are reining in worldwide efforts to combat global warming. But not so in California. As others stop short of committing economic suicide, California's overaggressive government could inflict further economic harm on the state.

The California Air Resources Board last week released a draft of its Draconian, top-down manipulation of the economy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The agency's cap-and-trade regulations effectively would impose broad-based new taxes by making energy more costly and forcing industries to buy permission to emit greenhouse gases that bureaucrats insist dangerously warm the atmosphere.

However, Congress and 192 nations meeting next month to consider similar binding regulations seem to be backing off, rather than following California's lead. Polls show the public also is growing increasingly skeptical of claims that man-made emissions harm the atmosphere.

Another blow to global warming zealotry was the recent leak of thousands of e-mails and internal documents from the United Kingdom's influential Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. CRU research fed the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 report that blamed man-made greenhouse gas emissions for dangerously warming the Earth.

Leaked documents indicate researchers may have massaged data to bolster their conclusions, ignored contrary evidence by systematically excluding opposing views and hid or even destroyed data to prevent outsiders from testing their theory. In one e-mail, a lead IPCC report author lamented the ongoing cooling trend that conflicts with the theory: "We can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't."

Amid all this, a cap-and-trade bill in the Senate has stalled. China and the U.S., which account for 40 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, announced new emission goals, The Wall Street Journal reported, but declined to say how they will reach them. Indeed, China didn't promise overall emission reductions, but instead says it will seek to slow the rate of increase. Both nations avoided the most contentious issue of how much developed nations like the U.S. will pay developing nations like China to finance conversion to energy that results in fewer emissions. Next month's climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, seems on the way to producing at best another round of nonbinding political verbiage, rather than binding regulations.

Nevertheless, California's air board advances even when most others won't. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association estimates the CARB regulations will generate $143 billion in new state tax revenue from 2012-20 while adding $3.7 billion a year in fuel costs, $50,000 to the price of a new home and a 30-percent increase in electric bills. The California Manufacturers & Technology Association said is "gravely concerned" with the regulations' new costs.

Even global warming zealots concede that if every nation had complied with the previous international global warming treaty, 1997's Kyoto Protocol, it would have had virtually no effect on worldwide temperatures. California forging ahead alone with this costly, tax-grab certainly would reduce temperatures even less – and that's if we believe the science, now highly challenged, that its global warming regulations are based on.

WRITE A LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Letters to the Editor: E-mail to letters@ocregister.com. Please provide your name and telephone number (telephone numbers will not be published). Letters of about 200 words will be given preference. Letters will be edited for length, grammar and clarity.

WRITE A LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Letters to the Editor: E-mail to letters@ocregister.com.
Please provide your name, city and telephone number (telephone numbers will not be published).
Letters of about 200 words or videos of 30-seconds
each will be given preference. Letters will be edited for length, grammar and clarity.

User Agreement

Keep it civil and stay on topic. No profanity, vulgarity, racial
slurs or personal attacks. People who harass others or joke about
tragedies will be blocked. By posting your comment, you agree to
allow Orange County Register Communications, Inc. the right to
republish your name and comment in additional Register publications
without any notification or payment.